A wireless LAN (Local Area Network) is widely used for providing wireless communication among a plurality of terminals (e.g., a PC (personal computer), a portable terminal such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and an information processing apparatus including a computer) which are spaced from one another.
In the wireless LAN, the plurality of terminals (slave units) are wirelessly connected to a common access point (a master unit). The access point relays signals among the plurality of terminals.
In the wireless LAN, a need is arisen for secured communication among terminals in the same wireless LAN. To address the need, US 2005/0132193 A1 and US 2005/0238172 A1 describes encrypted communication between the access point and the terminal in the wireless LAN.
In order to establish encrypted communication between the access point and the respective terminals in the wireless LAN, a setup of the security is required between the access point and the respective terminals to select a common security level of the encryption scheme that is supported by both the access point and the respective terminals.
The plurality of terminals connected to the same access point do not always have the same encryption profile. The “encryption profile” includes a condition on encryption capability, which corresponds to the highest security level of security levels that the respective terminals support. For example, a terminal (e.g., a gaming machine) having low encryption capability and a terminal (e.g., a PC) having high encryption capability may share the same access point.
When the plurality of terminals with different encryption capability are connected the same access point, the security level finally adopted by the terminals is indiscriminately degraded to a security level corresponding to the minimum encryption capability among the terminals.